moneys which are due to her in ways approved
by her, which will augment her private fortune, he will retain her
confidence with her respect.

Each of us likes to own something in his or her own right. The custom
and prejudice that, since the abolition of slavery, make wives the
solitary exception to the rule that the "laborer is worthy of his
hire," are unworthy of a progressive age. The idea that such having
and holding will alienate a good woman from the husband who permits
it, degrades the sex. He whose manliness suffers by comparison with a
level-headed, clear-eyed wife capable of keeping her own bank account,
makes apparent what a mistake she made when she married _him_.

CHAPTER III.

THE PARABLE OF THE RICH WOMAN AND THE FARMER'S WIFE.

The rich woman was born and brought up in New York City; the farmer's
wife in Indiana.

They were as far apart in education and social station as if they had
belonged to different races and had lived in different hemispheres.

They were as near akin in circumstances and in suffering as if they
had been twin sisters, and brought up under the same roof.

The husband of one wrote "Honorable" before his name, and reckoned his
dollars by the million. He was, moreover, a man of imposing
deportment, bland in manner and ornate in language. As riches
increased he set his heart upon them and upon the good things that
riches buy. He had four children, and he erected ("built" was too
small a word) a palatial house in a fashionable street.

Each child had a suite of three rooms. Each apartment was elaborately
decorated and furnished. The drawing-rooms were crowded with
bric-a-brac and monuments of the upholsterer's ingenuity. It was a
work of art and peril to dust them every day. He developed a taste for
entertaining as time went on and honors thickened upon him, and he
mistook, like most of his guild, ostentation for hospitality. Every
dish at the banquets for which he became famous was a show piece. He
swelled with honest pride in the perusal of a popular personal
paragraph estimating the value of his silver and cut glass at $50,000.

The superintendent, part owner, and the slave of all this magnificence
was his wife. She was her own housekeeper, and employed, besides the
coachman, whose business was in the stables and upon his box, five
servants. There were twenty-five rooms in the palatial house, giving
to each servant five to be kept in the spick-and-span array demanded